RE: [docbook-apps] WebHelp search - anybody working on improving?

["Jan Tosovsky" <j.tosovsky@email.cz>]

On 2016-11-10 Janice Manwiller wrote:
> 
> The WebHelp search is a source of frustration, mostly because it does
> not support phrase searches...
> 
> Has there been any effort to improve the search? Has anyone else
> implemented a custom search that supports phrase searches?
> 

In the current implementation there is no way to do it. When search index is built, the original content is split into words, from which kind of look-up table is created (which word in which file is present).

When search phrase is entered, it is again split into separate words and each of them is searched in that look-up table.

The result is the number of occurrences of the given word in the particual file, which is used for ordering the search results.

In case of phrase searches the search index would have to store the full content. When performing the search all those content snippets would have to be processed using more complex algorithms. 

But instead of reinventing the wheel I believe there are some lightweight JavaScript ports of Lucene engine, which could be somehow integrated. However, I am not expert in this field.

Jan